Macintosh Classic

NAME	MACINTOSH CLASSIC
MANUFACTURER	Apple
TYPE	Professional Computer
ORIGIN	U.S.A.
YEAR	October 1990
END OF PRODUCTION	September 1992
BUILT IN LANGUAGE	None
KEYBOARD	Typewriter style, 84 keys with numeric keypad
CPU	Motorola MC 68000
SPEED	8 MHz
RAM	1 MB (expandable to 2 MB)
ROM	512 KB
GRAPHIC MODES	512 x 342
COLORS	Monochrome
SOUND	8-bit mono sound chip
SIZE / WEIGHT	13.2 (H) x 9.7 (W) x 11.2 (D) in / 19.5 lb.
I/O PORTS	Centronics, ADB (2: Keyboard, mouse), RS232/422, Internal expansion slot (96-pin Eurodin)
BUILT IN MEDIA	One or Two 3.5'' disk-drives, 40 MB HDD as an option
OS	MAC OS 6.0
POWER SUPPLY	Built-in switching PSU
PRICE	$999 without hard drive $1499 with 40 MB hard drive and 2 MB RAM

Macintosh Classic

Introduced as the first sub-$1,000 Macintosh in October 1990, the basic Classic came with 1 MB of RAM, a SuperDrive, and space to mount an internal SCSI hard drive. The hard drive version came with 2 MB of memory and a 40 MB hard drive. RAM expansion was via a 1 MB daughter card with two open slots, which could accept a pair of 256 KB or 1 MB SIMMs. This made memory upgrades far easier than on the Plus or SE, since the motherboard didn't have to be removed. At the same time, it means you should avoid any used Classic without 2 MB or more memory unless you have a source for the memory card.

One new feature on the Classic was elimination of the brightness knob. Instead brightness was controlled with a Brightness control panel.

A feature unique to the Classic is the ability to boot from ROM by holding down command-option-x-o at startup. The ROM Disk is called "Boot Disk" and is 357K in size. The ROM Disk uses Finder 6.1.x and System 6.0.3 - this combination is specifically designed for the Classic. The only control panels are General, Brightness, and Startup Disk. MacsBug and AppleShare Prep are also part of the System, which loads into 294K of your Mac's RAM. Because this is in ROM, there is no way to add anything to the ROM Disk.

Mac Classic was the last Mac to use the 8 MHz 68000 CPU.